


Bear Hunt

by Aierdome



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Advent Calendar, Bear troll, Gen, Sigrun being Sigrun, Trolls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 18:58:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6578470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aierdome/pseuds/Aierdome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sigrun is stuck on a patrol duty with nothing to kill and she's slowly dying of boredom. Thankfully, her parents know how to brighten her day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bear Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> Old fic for Forum Advent Calendar, 6th of December. The idea comes from national Polish holiday of Saint Nicholas Day (our name for Santa Claus), when parents give their children tiny presents as a Christmas Eve "preview" of sorts.

Year 87 rolled around, the snow fell, the hunting season ended and all that was left were long, long winter months of nothing in particular. Oh, well, some people were catching up on social activities, some devoted more time to their hobbies, yet others trained in preparation for inevitable coming of spring, but for Sigrun, Jul was the worst time of the year. 

She was bored, bored, _boooored_ to death and she had nothing to stave off her boredom.  
  
“I can’t believe you’re actually spending your time on arts and crafts!”, she said, not turning away from the window. Sitting by the stove, her partner in misery, another captain by the name of Katja was busying herself with cutting out paper figurines. Long chains of them lined the walls of the room already, a testament to the boredom shared by everyone delegated to watch duty. 

“It’s fun”, she told Sigrun now, biting her lip as she worked out a particularly tricky curve. “You should try it someday.”

Sigrun snorted and resumed her hopeful vigil, stepping from leg to leg and holding her rifle close to the chest. She and Katja were stuck on guard duty in a small outpost on the outskirts of Dalsnes, far enough from the city to hope for at least some troll or beast to wander around – provided anything felt like walking out in this weather. 

Sigrun had actually requested the duty, having been misinformed about the nature of the assignment. She had wanted to go out and actively patrol the countryside, not get stuck in a shack, wiping steam off the window every few minutes. Unfortunately, her father had taken her aside before she set out and informed her in no uncertain terms that, being as she was a captain now, she wasn’t supposed to, quoting general Eide, “go out and freeze her arse off in the snow by herself”. Sigrun snorted again. She wasn’t some pampered Swede to freeze her anything in any manner. 

Then again, she probably wouldn’t’ve found anything shambling around anyway. Winters were _awful_ for hunters.  
  
She wiped the steam off the shack’s window again and narrowed her eyes, noticing that the line of bushes on a distant mountain slope was… _hmm_. It looked for all in the world as if the shrubbery was trying to shake the snow off itself. Clearly, something was moving within it, and Sigrun hopefully reached for the binoculars. An animal, or maybe… just maybe…

Something black and huge exploded from the trees and landed in the snow before getting back up and galloping towards the shack. Sigrun grabbed the binoculars, pressed them to her eyes and leaned forward, not caring for the _CLANK!_ of metal hitting window’s glass. A moment later, she dropped it and ran to the exit, grabbing Katja and pulling her with her.

“Let’s go, let’s go!”

“Gah! No! What?! Why?!” The other captain was flailing her hands, half-dragged on the floor. Sigrun turned to her.

“It’s a bear beast!”

Katja paled. Sigrun grinned.

***

An adult brown bear could reach almost two metres in height, three metres in length and over three hundred kilograms in weight. This one had once been a fine specimen, and now it had extra mass, elongated claws and huge, skinless head with sabre-like tusks. Long story short, it was Rash’s version of a light tank, and it was running forward with no intention of stopping, roaring all the way.

And Sigrun was charging at it head-first, rifle blazing, with a battlecry of her own. 

She managed to fire five times and all shots hit home, but the beast soaked up bullets like it were bee stings. Then they clashed and just before the enormous jaw could close on her arm, Sigrun jumped to the side, hit the snow, rolled over and turned around, rifle over her shoulder, a knife almost as long as her forearm in her hand. The not-bear tried to turn around, but with its momentum and mass, it crashed in the snow mid-turn.

Sigrun wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. Rising the knife, she jumped on the not-bear with a roar and grabbed it by its maw, then quickly brought the blade down. It seemed to have an effect contrary to the one intended. The beast rose up suddenly, the bear in it trying to get on two feet, and Sigrun found herself hanging for her dear life, her great-grandma’s tales of rodeo suddenly turned real. As she tried to both not fall and get to beast’s brain with her knife, the non-bear found itself remembering that it wasn’t actually a bear anymore.

Which is to say, it begun to fall backwards. Sensing danger, Sigrun went for the last thing to have come to her mind. She grabbed the bear around the neck and, with as much strength as she could muster, headbutted it.

Her eyes went dizzy and she slipped off the beast’s back. She barely managed to roll aside in the snow before a huge and squishy lump of meat dropped right next to her. Darkness fell for a moment and when everything came back, there was something hot and wet on her face. Sigrun wiped it off and saw Katja’s annoyed face and extended hand.

“You could’ve at least waited for me! Now look at you, all covered in troll goop…”

“Doesn’t matter!” Sigrun jumped to her feet and grabbed Katja by the shoulders, grinning maniacally. “Did you see it?! Did you see it? I killed a bear with a headbutt!”

“I’m pretty sure it was the knife wo-“

“ _WITH A HEADBUTT!_ ” Sigrun ignored her and turned around, throwing her hands in the air. “ _Yee-haw!_ Must’ve been my Julaften gift!”

“It’s not Julaften yet. And from whom would this gift be anyway, great god Thor?”

“But of course! And if that’s my gift today, just think what a fantastic thing we’ll get on Julaften itself!” She turned to the fellow captain again, her grin framed in troll ichor. “Maybe we’ll even have a giant! Wouldn’t that be the awesomest?!”

Katja started to answer, but Sigrun ignored her, prancing – positively prancing – back to the shack.

“A bear! With a headbutt! Just wait until other captains hear about it!”

“Rrrright …”

***

“Well, that went well”, general Thor Eide said with a smile, putting his binoculars aside as he hid in the tall bush on the mountain slope. He turned to regard his wife, who was stifling a laugh with one hand, holding a spear in the other. The spear’s blade was still blackened from troll goop after she had used it to wake up the hibernating beast and point the disoriented creature in Sigrun’s general direction.

At last she managed to regain her composure and flashed a smile to him.

“I’ve got to admit, that was fun. We really should go out more often.”

Thor chuckled and looked back at Sigrun, now disappearing back into the outpost. She had always had a bad mood after hunting season was over, and this year the two generals finally decided to get their august personas out into the snow and bring their daughter something to stave off boredom. It seemed to have worked like a charm.

A sudden thought popped into his mind and Thor smiled. “You know she’ll be absolutely insufferable for the next, oh, two months or so?”

He could hear his wife’s heavy jacket rustle as she shrugged, no doubt smiling as well. “I think we can live with that.”


End file.
